49
political, and economic systems.
But Wright Mills was calling for
them to address the ways in which
rationalization and the shift of
social control to an elite were
affecting people on an individual
level too. The adoption of a
sociological imagination implied
a move from the objective study
of “what is” to a more subjective
answer to the question of “what
ought to be?” He advocated that
power should effectively be
transferred to an intellectual elite.
A pioneering spirit
Unsurprisingly, Wright Mills’
criticism of sociology was met
with hostility and he became
isolated from the mainstream.
His interpretation of the changing
nature of the class struggle was
also largely dismissed. The
conservative establishment also
shunned him, rejecting his claims
of a concentration of power in the
military, business, and political
elite, which was seen as a direct
attack on the basis of Cold War
policy in the West.
Nevertheless, the books and
articles of Wright Mills were widely
read, and became influential
outside the social science
establishment. The philosophers
and political activists who emerged
from the period of McCarthyism
were particularly attracted to his
description of a power elite. Many
of his ideas were adopted by the
social movements of the US New
Left (a term that Wright Mills
popularized in his “Letter to the
New Left” in 1960), which in turn
paved the way for sociologists
such as the German scholar
Herbert Marcuse to adopt a New
Leftist approach in the 1960s.FOUNDATIONS OF SOCIOLOGY
Wright Mills’ ideas were, in many
ways, ahead of their time, and his
untimely death in 1962 meant that
he did not live to see many of them
gain general acceptance. His work
foreshadowed the emergence of
new socialist thinkers, especially
in France, with the counterculture
of the 1960s. Michel Foucault’s
emphasis on the notion of power
bears a particularly strong
resemblance to ideas that were
first raised by Wright Mills.
Today, the so-called War on
Terror in the aftermath of the
9/11 attacks and the disastrous
financial crises of the early 21st
century have led to a growing
realization that much of our
everyday lives is shaped by wider
social and historical issues.
US urban policy analyst Professor
Peter Dreier claimed in 2012 that
Wright Mills would have loved
the Occupy Wall Street movement
against social and economic
inequality. This example of
ordinary people objecting to
a power elite that they claim is
controlling society and affecting
their lives is the sociological
imagination being exhibited in
a campaign for social change. ■Charles Wright Mills
Fiercely independent and
critical of authority, Charles
Wright Mills attributed his
unconventional attitudes to an
isolated and sometimes lonely
childhood because his family
moved around frequently. He
was born in Waco, Texas, and
initially studied at Texas A&M
University, but found the
atmosphere there stifling and
left after his first year. He
transferred to the University of
Texas in Austin, graduated in
sociology and gained a master’sdegree in philosophy. An
obviously talented, but difficult,
student, he went on to study at
the University of Wisconsin, where
he fell out with his professors
and refused to make revisions
to his doctoral thesis. He was,
however, eventually awarded his
PhD in 1942. By this time, he had
taken up a post at the University
of Maryland, and with one of his
doctoral supervisors, Hans Gerth,
wrote From Max Weber: Essays
in Sociology.
In 1945 Wright Mills moved,
on a Guggenheim fellowship, to
Columbia University, where hespent the rest of his career.
Although his outspoken
criticism of the social science
establishment saw him pushed
out of the mainstream, he
gained much popular attention.
His career ended abruptly when
he died of heart disease in 1962,
at the age of only 45.Key works1948 The New Men of Power:
America’s Labor Leaders
1956 The Power Elite
1959 The Sociological
ImaginationUnemployment can lead to people
blaming themselves for their situation.
But a sociological imagination would,
says Wright Mills, prompt such people
to look to wider causes and effects.